Confessions Of A Former Online Social Justice Warrior

Within the world created by the various apps I used, I got plenty of shares and retweets. But this masked how ineffective I had become outside, in the real world. The only causes I was actually contributing to were the causes of mobbing and public shaming. Real change does not stem from these tactics. They only cause division, alienation, and bitterness.

How did I become that person? It happened because it was exhilarating. Every time I would call someone racist or sexist, I would get a rush. That rush would then be reaffirmed and sustained by the stars, hearts, and thumbs-up that constitute the nickels and dimes of social media validation. The people giving me these stars, hearts, and thumbs-up were engaging in their own cynical game: A fear of being targeted by the mob induces us to signal publicly that we are part of it.

…The social justice vigilantism I was living on Twitter and Facebook was like the app in my dream. Aggressive online virtue signaling is a fundamentally two-dimensional act. It has no human depth. It’s only when we snap out of it, see the world as it really is, and people as they really are, that we appreciate the destruction and human suffering we caused when we were trapped inside.

Barrett Wilson,I Was The Mob Until The Mob Came For Me,” Quillette 14 July 2018

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3 comments

  1. Social justice supposedly heralds the arrival of Marxist Communism or Utopia. Marxism is an evolutionary scientistic purification ideology that seeks to eradicate all vestiges of evil (i.e., evil social constructs, genetic racism) from man and world.

    Classical or violent Communism was translated into Cultural Marxism (also multiculturalism) by the Frankfurt School and Antonio Gramsci, the progenitors of political correctness, critical theory, gay rights, gender ideology, (obscene) sex education, and more:

    “Classical Marxism attempted to remake society by the take-over of private property, cultural Marxism “goes deeper; it pretends to redefine family, sexual identity and human nature.” This ideology which “calls itself progressive…is nothing else than the serpent’s offer for man to take control, to replace God, to arrange salvation, in this world.” (Dr. Dr. Anca-Maria Cernea, (Romanian Doctor Warns Church About Cultural Marxism, Austin Ruse, Breitbart, Oct. 21, 2015)

    Dr. Cernea’s warning is timely and urgent as there’s a growing trend among conservative Evangelical, PCA, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic thinkers of adopting Marxist-type ideals for political and cultural interaction. One glaring example of this is the “widespread acceptance and use of the term, social justice.” (How Marxist Thinking Is Creeping into the Church, christianintellectual.com)

    Another example is the adoption of Critical Race Theory by Christian thinkers such as Mr. Jemar Tisby, a Special Assistant to the Chancellor at Reformed Theological Seminary and Dr. Jarvis Williams, an Associate Professor of New Testament at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Both men are enamored of Critical Race Theory and when they peer through its ideological worldview lens they see an evangelical church polluted by ingrained racism.

    Then they use this illusory ‘data’ to tell the evangelical churches what is required for “racial reconciliation.” (“Critical Race Theory, RTS and SBTS” by William H. Smith, Aquila Report, Mar. 30, 2017)

  2. When you couple Linda’s comments with the quote in this blog post and with the “Let Them Not Eat” post a from couple of weeks ago, you can begin to see the problem. Having been pushed into a low view of scripture by pastors and theologians who have bought into what sociologists Smith and Denton call Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), mainline protestants are more concerned (i.e., those who are concerned about anything at all) social justice, feeding the world’s poor, pushing for extreme environmental change, etc. than they are about what the scriptures really have to say about mankind’s fall and corruption of creation AND what the Gospels and the apocalyptic books have to say about the future.
    And now matter how hard one tries, it seems nearly impossible for any of them to get past those things with which they’ve been so heavily indoctrinated and to accept the truth.

  3. Linda,
    Thank you again, for your eye opening and thought provoking insights into the true agenda behind the social gospel movement. I think it is just one of many ways that Satan is always trying to replace the gospel of Jesus Christ with the worldly “wisdom” of Babylon. There is always a struggle going on between Christ and the evil serpent, between the heavenly Jerusalem and idolatrous Babylon, the chaste bride of Christ and whoring Jezebel, but Revelation shows us how it will end! Throughout history, since Adam wanted to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because he thought God was holding out on him, human beings have been deceived by the serpent to resort to human ingenuity rather than to the Word of God. I think that is really what is going on in the churches. The social gospel is part of Satan’s agenda to deceive, lure and seduce them, in order to bring them into Babylonian captivity. And God is allowing this to happen to reveal who the elect really are, and to bring judgement on the apostate churches. For the sake of the elect, he will bring reformation again by restoring the Truth in the churches, and when all the elect have been revealed, He will bring the final judgement.

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